Posts by Bob Calder

Scientology spokesman confirms Xenu story

@rumor control

Niven appears to have been in on the discussion but not "at a science fiction convention." They lived in Pasadena or nearby one another, and were acquainted. In general Hubbard was known as a blowhard and a marginal writer. A bet? Perhaps, but it wasn't the *result* of a bet. Hubbard wanted to make money and escape taxation. During that period, several others did create "churches" along various themes, mostly vaguely Eastern woo. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was very skeptical and indeed attacked the Scientologists. For this reason, Hubbard bought a large boat, intending to escape extradition by remaining on the high seas. He finally got very ill and lived in hiding in Clearwater Florida for the remainder of his days, scuttling crabwise from house to house through hidden passages if the story is true. Clearwater is a bit like Utah in that speaking ill of the religion makes you persona non grata. Scientology is a family enterprise, a business if you will.

Web maven gives convicted botmaster keys to new kingdom

Job? What job?

If I read correctly, the subject used someone else's money to pay for a domain registration and used someone else's property without their permission (botnet.)

Assuming he made a reasonable amount of money that allowed him to drink the occasional beer and live a comfortable life, the above immediately disqualifies him for a position of trust.

You don't have to be trustworthy to do lots of jobs at a bank because there are people whose job it is to look over your shoulder. Positions of trust are different and those who violate trust are violating social compacts that allow our society to function quickly and smoothly. Having to worry about violations of trust slows us immensely.

People who work in the networked economy are aware of that. The employer knows that and is merely being disingenuous.

The subject in question should sell used automobiles for the rest of his natural life. That would place him in a social position where the public would understand how to interact with him on a day to day basis. There are plenty of people like him in the world. What is special about him because he knows "all about computers" as the clueless express it.

'Gv up txt 4 Lent,' urges bishop

Did the church ever...

Did the church ever tell people to quit writing letters to each other? I know speech (as in free) in general has never been particularly popular with them but I thought writing was generally encouraged even when "silent."

Michael Crichton dead at 66

It was indeed fun 'till _State of Fear_ when...

He interviewed several climatologists and settled on John Milloy as his mentor. The admixture of scientific fact and fantasy became too much to bear and his intellect broke under the load, spewing forth Milloy's drek. Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. There were never truer words spoken when applied to that book.

So we look back on the death of a literary figure, trying to decide whether to place the coins on his eyelids. Or not.

US teen admits to 'Anonymous' DDoS attack on Scientology

How does Scientology lose money?

Why is it that the retarded nutjobs get protection before the rest of humankind?

Retards and nutjobs dedicate their lives and earnings to those who long to suck the goodie out with a straw.

Scientology loses money because the Internet is the biggest straw ever invented. Without it they have to go back to Hubbard's original scheme to use door-to-door zombie salesmen.

Tumbleweeds outnumber punters, as iPhone's First Night flops

The easy part

To tell you the truth, the part I liked best was buying it.

I am used to spending an hour any time I need anything from the phone people. Buying an iPhone was quick as picking up a paper. The free content in iTunes U has made it a welcome companion.

Remarks like this one: "... will make them realise that we just will not pay for an over inflated product." just beg for the obvious rejoinder.

iPhone v. Q – War in the backwoods of Mississippi

two insignificant remarks

1. You didn't figure out how to transfer non-apple music? WTF? It just happens. You don't *do* anything.

2. Figuring out the interface? lol The problem was un-learning what your other phones had trained you to do. No little stick to poke it with.

Of course voice recognition would be nice but on the iPhone you can SEE things because they are BIG so there isn't any squinting at the tiny little numbers. Like everybody else you think it needs some kind of additional hardware. No sir. It just needs software. It isn't really such a limited computer. If Apple had let it connect as a normal device this wouldn't be such a pain in the butt. When I can drag an application onto the desktop and run it, I will be happy.

CIOs pooh-pooh the iPhone

CIOs? lol, no way

Did you guys scrape this story from the CIO ragazine? Seems like more CIO masturbation going on.

Why would I want to use a handheld that I can actually read and not have to poke with its own special little stick? I mean, who actually comes up with this drek? It's a no-brainer.

If you think about mail services, the average ISP leverages the ancient technology to serve hundreds of times more simultaneous users than any corporation.

There is nothing special about the iPhone. It is just the same old stuff done better. Hard to upgrade? Puhleeze! A few days ago a pedometer was added by a third party.

How to fix your kids' education for $200m

XML

McNealy was saying that the ontology is fixed so you can create an XML skeleton to stuff highly structured data in. This should allow federation pretty easily. It's pretty simple and will work because it is a guide, not an authority. The teacher is the authority who will use the resource to build a way for each child to benefit in an individulaized fashion.

It is not like Wikipedia. Wikipedia has to contend with controversey and oversampling isn't an option. If you continue to pretend that an encyclopedia is like a dictionary it won't be very helpful. Wales is correct in that quite soon, the growth of information will make it impossible to afford collection and distribution models based on traditional businesses such as encyclopedia publishers.